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A conversation with Deep Rising filmmaker Matthieu Rytz about the promise and the peril of mining the ocean floor.
“To say, ‘Don’t harm the ocean’ — it is the easiest message in the world, right? You just have to show a photo of a turtle with a straw in its nose,” Michael Lodge, the secretary general of the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority, toldThe New York Times last year. “Everybody in Brooklyn can then say, ‘I don’t want to harm the ocean.’ But they sure want their Teslas.”
Canadian filmmaker Matthieu Rytz apparently didn’t get the memo. Deep Rising, his new documentary narrated by Jason Momoa, aims at one of the great contradictions of the energy transition: that deep-sea mining could provide a wealth of copper, nickel, and cobalt, the battery materials that are critically needed for EVs and clean-energy storage — and could also trigger ecological collapse in the fragile Pacific Ocean abyss.
At the center of this debate is the International Seabed Authority, a Jamaica-based U.N. organization tasked with the conflicting goals of protecting the ocean floor and writing regulations for the extraction of “polymetallic nodules.” The metal-rich nodules are sprinkled across an internationally governed part of the Pacific called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which starts about 500 miles south of Hawaii and by some measurements stretches roughly twice the size of India. By the estimate of The Metals Company, which has a multi-billion-dollar stake in an eventual mining operation, the supply of nodules would be enough to eventually power “280 million electric vehicles.”
At the same time, scientists — including a whistleblower from inside The Metals Company’s own exploratory team — have stressed that we know almost nothing about the deep ocean, least of all how a large-scale mining operation could impact everything from regional biodiversity to the potential extinction of undiscovered animals to ocean carbon sequestration. The nodules alone take millions of years to form.
On Monday, the International Seabed Authority kicked off a two-week-long meeting to discuss potentially issuing the first commercial mining permits. It’s already met staunch opposition: The United Kingdom just came out as the latest nation to demand a moratorium on deep-sea mining, joining calls for a total ban issued by France, Germany, New Zealand, and at least 13 other countries. (The U.S. is not a part of the International Seabed Authority because it was one of only four countries that declined to formally ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1984, thanks to Republican opposition. China, Norway, and Russia are the major proponents pushing for deep-sea mining to open up).
With this as our backdrop, I spoke to Rytz about the making of Deep Rising and the complexities of the deep-sea mining debate. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tell me a little bit about how you discovered this story. As the narration points out, deep-sea mining is “out of sight and out of mind” for most people.
I discovered it in 2018 when I was finishing my previous film [Anote’s Ark], and working with the president of Kiribati in the middle of the Pacific. Because of the work I was doing, I had privileged access, since the president was the main character of my film. I started hearing the conversation about deep-sea mining when basically nothing was in the media; it was an absolute unknown story. It really intrigued me. I was like, Wow, this is a very interesting, complex story. I jumped on it and went on the long journey till now.
The U.N.’s International Seabed Authority begins a nearly two-week-long meeting this week that will potentially end with the issuing of the first provisional licenses for deep-sea mining. What has it been like to follow these developments while you’re in the final stages of releasing and promoting this film?
Once the mining code — if the mining code — is ratified, it will be extremely hard to change it. It’s not like in government when you have political football between two parties. Once the regulation is in place, it might take the same amount of time just to make an amendment because you need to get a consensus of all the U.N. members. So it’s a critical time now because they’re actually drafting it and if it passes, the text will define how deep-sea mining will go.
There’s still a chance, actually, to block it or to postpone it. There has been a big wave of countries signing a moratorium and there was very big news yesterday, from the U.K., which is supporting the moratorium. We’ve seen some smaller states sign it; France was a big one, but the U.K. is a significant gain in the movement for a moratorium.
But for me — and this is the story of Deep Rising as well — I’m like, well, okay, sure, let’s say deep-sea mining is stopped by a ban or a moratorium or simply because the mining code doesn’t happen. That doesn’t stop the need for nickel. And that, for me, is the biggest conversation, because if deep-sea mining doesn’t go ahead, it will mean way more pristine ecosystems are torn down in tropical rainforests — mainly in Indonesia, but also New Caledonia, the Philippines, Madagascar, a lot of places. In northern Russia, they’re mining nickel in the tundra and they’re releasing massive amounts of methane.
So for me, it’s not one or the other. Deep-sea mining is better because we’re going to save the rainforest is a fundamentally flawed argument. Because we don’t need nickel in the first place; there are solutions that are not based on finite resources. There’s battery chemistry that is based on iron-phosphate batteries. Green hydrogen is another very good example and a very good debate.
And, you know, we don’t need to buy that many private cars; we need to develop and share resources. When you see the climate bill from President Biden subsidizing every citizen to buy an EV, it’s basically subsidizing removing the pristine ecosystem in Indonesia. I don’t call that a climate plan.
I wanted to ask you about that. The script of Deep Rising can be pretty critical of the energy transition, calling it the “so-called green revolution.” Can you tell me a little about the use of that term, “so-called”?
This is exactly what I mean. You take the narrative of the “green revolution” from the official perspective — the president’s perspective or the industry’s perspective, from President Biden or Elon Musk. Let’s say they have the same narrative: Buy a Tesla and you’re going to save the planet. Because Tesla would not exist without subsidies; every taxpayer in the U.S. has spent massive amounts of money to make it happen. And I’m not against EVs, but it’s important to understand the climate has no boundaries. If you remove the ecosystem in Indonesia, you’re increasing the climate crisis in the U.S., and so on. You’re putting your citizens at risk. Every country is similar.
There’s no reason to go after finite resources like nickel. Again, if there was no solution, it’d maybe be like, “Oh, there’s a trade-off.” But the point is, at a very large, industrial scale, there are solutions to produce energy without extracting finite resources.
In the film, the narration states that “critical metals are not the solution; they are the new oil.” I’m convinced that there could be grave ecological consequences to deep-sea mining, but how do you reconcile that against the grave ecological consequences of the fossil fuels we’re extracting and burning now?
Again, it’s a matter of changing the chemistry of the batteries. If you take the composition of the Earth’s crust, nickel is 0.009%. Iron is 5%. Iron is everywhere. A company like BYD in China, they’ve been very successfully building for like five years now EVs that are as good as Tesla’s with no gram of nickel, no gram of cobalt. Iron and phosphate are widely available. Rivian, in the U.S., they’re also shifting. And that can happen — anytime soon, GM or Ford or Toyota could change their battery chemistry.
Wait — if this is something we have the technology for now, and it’s scaleable, why are mining companies spending all this time and money building deep-sea vacuum cleaners to suck up nodules to power batteries that we don’t even need to be using?
Because there’s a whole supply chain that’s already been built. And when you’re investing billions of dollars to build battery factories, you need to sell enough batteries to recoup your investment. The problem is we made the investment in the wrong direction.
The second problem is political. The EU could ban nickel in the battery and that’d be it. Then Volkswagen and Volvo and BMW and Renault, all the German and French carmakers, would have no choice. I don’t think it’s as easy in the U.S. but in the EU, that’s a move they could do. It’s happening: The U.K. did a moratorium [on deep-sea mining]. France did a total ban. And, of course, some will lose a lot of money, but it’s the right thing to do.
And the Chinese, by the way — most of the domestic market doesn’t use cobalt and nickel. They’re very advanced; the Blade technology from BYD is years ahead. But they’re not exporting that much because of the commercial war, basically.
On your website, you have a manifesto, which states that your aim as a filmmaker is to “ask uncomfortable questions instead of providing reassuring answers.” Can you talk a little about how that philosophy guided your approach to this film in particular?
My background is not in filmmaking; it’s in anthropology. I think because of my upbringing as an intellectual, I can see a system’s complexity. Filmmakers can sometimes cut straight to a conclusion and for me, it’s very challenging because I needed to simplify when making a film. I think I’ve oversimplified already; I see the film and I think “Oh, this is so oversimplified!” even when it’s a very complex film for most of the viewers.
I could have done a film that was just bashing the mining industry, showing how bad they are and how bad capitalists are destroying the planet. The problem with this is, you preach to the choir. The people you actually need to talk to, they will not listen.
Instead, I got invited to speak to the finance sector, the mining sector, a few weeks ago at a big conference in Geneva. Some of the biggest hedge funds and banks — a Swiss bank, a European bank, a Singaporean bank — they were all in the room. They were asking me for advice about if they should have deep-sea mining in their portfolio. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was like, “I can explain to you why you shouldn’t.”
The change is massive when you can tap into the higher side, the financial system, basically. For me, it’s a really interesting goal, because I take this approach so it’s like, “Oh, you’re not just bashing us and saying how bad we are. Let’s set aside our differences and sit down for coffee.”
I wanted to ask about the disagreement within the Pacific Islands communities. On the one hand, you show grassroots resistance to deep-sea mining in Papua New Guinea; on the other, you also show a delegate from Nauru (which sponsors a subsidiary of The Metals Company) pressuring the International Seabed Authority to make a quick decision on commercial licensing. Is the jury still out on deep-sea mining when it comes to regional community support?
There are two forces here. One is that no corporation can apply for a deep-sea mining license. The Metal Company cannot go to Jamaica and say, “I want to mine the deep ocean.” You need to find a country that will sponsor you. So the Metal Company can fly into Nauru, the smallest country in the world, and promise them the moon. Nauru is a very specific story with a long history of extraction with the Commonwealth, with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They’ve been mining phosphate since the Second World War. So this is a very specific case.
When it comes to other countries, like Kiribati and a lot of other island nations, they’re kind of under the Chinese now. And there’s a lot of paradox with China because again, the domestic market is very different than the exporting markets. They’re fueling the rest of the world with nickel, so they have six licenses [in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone] and they’re lobbying quite hard now to get deep-sea mining approved. But they own 60% of the nickel capacities globally and the U.S. has 0%. So for the Chinese, they’d still get all this nickel to basically keep the rest of the world dependent on them.
I have to ask about the cinematography, which is absolutely gorgeous. I think a lot of times deep sea animals don’t get the respect of more charismatic environmental icons like polar bears or whales because they look so alien and creepy. But the footage you included really gives this part of the world vibrance, life, and personality.
It came from years and years of digging through hard drives. A lot of the footage comes from scientific expeditions. It was a very long process for me to convince the researchers to give me the license to use their footage, too, because their first reaction was like, “No, it’s scientific material; that specific jellyfish, which is undiscovered, is under embargo.” Which means the scientists haven’t published their paper yet. And I was like, “Guys.”
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
The concept of the common heritage of humankind is very important. It’s outlined in the Law of the Sea, a set of strong rules by the U.N., that the deep sea belongs to humanity. And every citizen of the planet has a shared responsibility to really look at what is happening because it’s the biggest land grab in human history. The mining area is the size of Mongolia. It’s enormous: I mean, imagine if Mongolia, which is an entire country, was mined entirely. It doesn’t make sense. We have a shared responsibility because we know the climate crisis doesn’t have boundaries. Everyone is concerned.
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Defenders of the Inflation Reduction Act have hit on what they hope will be a persuasive argument for why it should stay.
With the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for building and producing clean energy hanging in the balance, the law’s supporters have increasingly turned to dollars-and-cents arguments in favor of its preservation. Since the election, industry and research groups have put out a handful of reports making the broad argument that in addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, taking away these tax credits would mean higher electricity bills, as well as the oft-cited increase in greenhouse gas emissions
The American Clean Power Association put out a report in December, authored by the consulting firm ICF, arguing that “energy tax credits will drive $1.9 trillion in growth, creating 13.7 million jobs and delivering 4x return on investment.”
The Solar Energy Industries Association followed that up last month with a letter citing an analysis by Aurora Energy Research, which found that undoing the tax credits for wind, solar, and storage would reduce clean energy deployment by 237 gigawatts through 2040 and cost nearly 100,000 jobs, all while raising bills by hundreds of dollars in Texas and New York. (Other groups, including the conservative environmental group ConservAmerica and the Clean Energy Buyers Association have commissioned similar research and come up with similar results.)
And just this week, Energy Innovation, a clean energy research group that had previously published widely cited research arguing that clean energy deployment was not linked to the run-up in retail electricity prices, published a report that found repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would “increase cumulative household energy costs by $32 billion” over the next decade, among other economic impacts.
The tax credits “make clean energy even more economic than it already is, particularly for developers,” explained Energy Innovation senior director Robbie Orvis. “When you add more of those technologies, you bring down the electricity cost significantly,” he said.
Historically, the price of fossil fuels like natural gas and coal have set the wholesale price for electricity. With renewables, however, the operating costs associated with procuring those fuels go away. The fewer of those you have, “the lower the price drops,” Orvis said. Without the tax credits to support the growth and deployment of renewables, the analysis found that annual energy costs per U.S. household would go up some $48 annually by 2030, and $68 by 2035.
These arguments come at a time when retail electricity prices in much of the country have grown substantially. Since December 2019, average retail electricity prices have risen from about $0.13 per kilowatt-hour to almost $0.18, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Massachusetts and California, rates are over $0.30 a kilowatt-hour, according to the Energy Information Administration. As Energy Innovation researchers have pointed out, states with higher renewable penetration sometimes have higher rates, including California, but often do not, as in South Dakota, where 77% of its electricity comes from renewables.
Retail electricity prices are not solely determined by fuel costs Distribution costs for maintaining the whole electrical system are also a factor. In California, for example,it’s these costs that have driven a spike in rates, as utilities have had to harden their grids against wildfires. Across the whole country, utilities have had to ramp up capital investment in grid equipment as it’s aged, driving up distribution costs, a 2024 Energy Innovation report argued.
A similar analysis by Aurora Energy Research (the one cited by SEIA) that just looked at investment and production tax credits for wind, solar, and batteries found that if they were removed, electricity bills would increase hundreds of dollars per year on average, and by as much as $40 per month in New York and $29 per month in Texas.
One reason the bill impact could be so high, Aurora’s Martin Anderson told me, is that states with aggressive goals for decarbonizing the electricity sector would still have to procure clean energy in a world where its deployment would have gotten more expensive. New York is targetinga target for getting 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, while Minnesota has a goal for its utilities to sell 55% clean electricity by 2035 and could see its average cost increase by $22 a month. Some of these states may have to resort to purchasing renewable energy certificates to make up the difference as new generation projects in the state become less attractive.
Bills in Texas, on the other hand, would likely go up because wind and solar investment would slow down, meaning that Texans’ large-scale energy consumption would be increasingly met with fossil fuels (Texas has a Renewable Portfolio Standard that it has long since surpassed).
This emphasis from industry and advocacy groups on the dollars and cents of clean energy policy is hardly new — when the House of Representatives passed the (doomed) Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill in 2009, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the House, “Remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.”
More recently, when Democratic Senators Martin Heinrich and Tim Kaine hosted a press conference to press their case for preserving the Inflation Reduction Act, the email that landed in reporters’ inboxes read “Heinrich, Kaine Host Press Conference on Trump’s War on Affordable, American-Made Energy.”
“Trump’s war on the Inflation Reduction Act will kill American jobs, raise costs on families, weaken our economic competitiveness, and erode American global energy dominance,” Heinrich told me in an emailed statement. “Trump should end his destructive crusade on affordable energy and start putting the interests of working people first.”
That the impacts and benefits of the IRA are spread between blue and red states speaks to the political calculation of clean energy proponents, hoping that a bill that subsidized solar panels in Texas, battery factories in Georgia, and battery storage in Southern California could bring about a bipartisan alliance to keep it alive. While Congressional Republicans will be scouring the budget for every last dollar to help fund an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a group of House Republicans have gone on the record in defense of the IRA’s tax credits.
“There's been so much research on the emissions impact of the IRA over the past few years, but there's been comparatively less research on the economic benefits and the household energy benefits,” Orvis said. “And I think that one thing that's become evident in the last year or so is that household energy costs — inflation, fossil fuel prices — those do seem to be more top of mind for Americans.”
Opinion modeling from Heatmap Pro shows that lower utility bills is the number one perceived benefit of renewables in much of the country. The only counties where it isn’t the number one perceived benefit are known for being extremely wealthy, extremely crunchy, or both: Boulder and Denver in Colorado; Multnomah (a.k.a. Portland) in Oregon; Arlington in Virginia; and Chittenden in Vermont.
On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.